During your VALORANT ranked grind, you make a ton of memories—outlandish clutches, one-trick moves, and more—that you’d likely want to keep. While recording an entire match for a couple of clips doesn’t sound convenient, replays solve this issue—here’s how to save one of your VALORANT gameplay.
Replays focus on saving your best plays without hogging your device’s storage. To explain the basics, video games record input from your mouse, keyboard, or controller, which, in the presence of a video capture feature, can be used to “replay” your entire experience. The difference is, you don’t have to save an hour-long match; you can just keep the clips you want. Most video games come with an in-built replay feature these days, but does VALORANT have one? We’re here to answer all such VALORANT replay queries you may have, all in this guide.
Does VALORANT have a native replay system?
At the time of writing, VALORANT doesn’t have a native or in-built replay system. So, you have to use third-party replay software to get your work done.
Now before you jump to conclusions, back in 2023, Developer Riot Games has confirmed it’s working on a native replay system for VALORANT PC. It’s currently under development with no official ETA, but considering how restless the community is getting with days, Riot is likely looking to deliver it by the end of 2025.
To address player concerns about replays in VALORANT PC, the devs have given a couple of updates on the system’s making and the challenges faced. Back in 2024, Riot released a clip of a prototype at work and highlighted the limitations it’s facing while developing the system. The main issues are with optimizing performance and stability and maintaining accuracy in representation of our gameplay. For example, in one scenario, the Mid Market Door in the Ascent map is shown malfunctioning in the replay view, while it opened perfectly fine during the match. More recently, Tech Lead Marcus Reid explained how high ping scenarios are causing some subtle inaccuracies to show up in replay clips. Needless to say, the native replay system will only make it to VALORANT when these hiccups are nullified.
Until then, there’re a few third-party replay software that you can always use.
Best replay software for VALORANT PC
NVIDIA ShadowPlay
Until Riot deploys an in-built replay system for VALORANT, you can use the popular NVIDIA Shadowplay software to record and save your clips. That said, you need to have an NVIDIA GPU to use its features, including the Instant Replay tool. If your PC supports it, all you need to do is download the GeForce Experience app (now known as the NVIDIA app) for free from the official NVIDIA website and enable the overlay from the Settings. Bring out the overlay with the shortcut Alt+Z keys and enable Instant Replay.
You can then set a hotkey that you can use to save the last “x” minutes of gameplay. Say, you clutched a round with a 4K. To save it, just press the hotkey and ShadowPlay will save the replay in a separate folder. You can record up to 20 minutes of gameplay at a time.
Radeon ReLive
AMD’s ReLive Instant Replay tool is included with the Radeon software. If you have an AMD GPU, this is one of the best options you have to save replays. With the Radeon software installed on your PC, you can enable the Instant Replay feature from its Settings > Recording tab and tweak your recording needs as you like.
When you want to save a replay, simply bring out the overlay and select Save Instant Replay or use the hotkey you set.
Medal.tv
If you’re looking for a third option that doesn’t have a GPU requirement, consider Medal.tv. Besides a replay feature, it offers excellent editing tools and an automatic clip detection feature too. It also has a mobile app, so if you’re planning to switch to VALORANT mobile for when it’s launched, you’ll have an option ready at your service.
Even as a third-party app, Medal.tv is pretty well optimized and shouldn’t cause performance hiccups. That said, if you have a low-end PC prone to lags and stutters, you may want to keep a close eye on how Medal.tv is affecting your experience.
How to save VALORANT replays on PS5
On PS5, you get an excellent capture feature native to the console platform. You can use it to effortlessly capture replays of your VALORANT clutches. It works similarly to NVIDIA ShadowPlay and AMD ReLive. Just follow these steps:
- Press the create button on your controller to bring out the create menu and choose to “Save recent gameplay.”
- You can save anywhere between the last 15 seconds up to an hour of gameplay.
How to save VALORANT replays on Xbox
Like PS5, Xbox consoles have a platform-specific replay feature too. Here’s how to use it to save moments of your VALORANT gameplay on Xbox Series X|S consoles:
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide, and then press the X button to grab the last 30 seconds of your gameplay.
- You can capture up to the last two minutes of your gameplay. Press the View button to change the duration.
The capture feature on Xbox consoles is slightly underwhelming, considering it only lets you save up to two minutes of gameplay at a time. If you’re not too worried about space, you can consider recording the entire match to avoid missing out on perfect moments.
Are there any downsides to recording your gameplay in VALORANT?
Unless your device is super underpowered, there’s no significant downsides of recording your VALORANT gameplay or saving replays of it. The tools we mentioned in this guide are all well-optimized and don’t cause performance issues. Even if it’s a potato PC, saving replays shouldn’t hurt your experience as long you have enough storage space to hold those clips.
Recording your VALORANT matches lets you review your gameplay later and identify mistakes, helping you improve over time. If you’re serious about Competitive and want to rank up fast, most pros would recommend you to rewatch your matches and try to analyze your moves. When you watch replays, you’ll likely gain a lot of insights that you missed while playing the game, including ways you could have better handled a particular situation, your enemy’s perspective, and more. You can identify your mechanical weaknesses too, which will let you warm up better.
If you have a mid to high-end PC with enough storage, you can record full VODs of your gameplay to better analyze your strengths and limitations in VALORANT. But if you have a low-end device, stick to replays and you should be fine.
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